Event design Archives : Conferences That Work

Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read

Monday, October 21st, 2024 by Adrian Segar

I’ve not always agreed with Freeman’s Reports, but, if you’re in the meeting industry, Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read.

“We’ve calibrated our research and confirmed our hypothesis: many organizers are operating on outdated definitions of attendee and exhibitor value. The good news? We’re here to help you speak the same language as your stakeholders and overcome the obstacles that prevent progress.

This report is your playbook for embracing shifts, equipping you with the insights and strategies to make change now.”
Fall 2024 Freeman Syndicated Survey of Event Organizers. Copyright Freeman 2024

Why you should read this Freeman report

Read this report to discover if you’re doing what’s needed to improve your events for your attendees.

The biggest takeaway? Only a quarter of event organizers are constantly evolving their event designs. Freeman calls them the Innovators and describes how their approach differs from their Conventionalist peers.

“Although most organizers report that they consider market trends and audience needs when developing their most important events, only 27% of organizers report that dramatic audience-centric changes occur from one event to the next.”

Why this matters

Freeman’s Innovators create events that align closely with the true needs of attendees, while Conventionalists often stick to outdated models. The result? Innovator-led events are far more likely to delight attendees—and ultimately, all stakeholders.

As Freeman puts it:

“It makes sense that organizers are more focused on attendee-related outcomes than exhibitor/sponsor outcomes. After all, if your attendees don’t get value from your event, then your event partners won’t get value either.”

Freeman’s conclusions come from comparing the event attendee intent and behavior data from their Q1 2024 Trends Report with this report’s survey data of event organizers.

Here are three examples of how the Innovators set themselves apart:

1. Learning at events

There’s a significant gap between what organizers and attendees think are important factors affecting learning at events:

65% of organizers believe classroom lectures are top learning methods, while only 31% of attendees agree.
Organizers underestimate the importance of hands-on interactions or participatory activations (31%) compared to 56% of attendees who prioritize them.
Informal meetings with SMEs are rated important by 24% of organizers, but 48% of attendees find them crucial.

Innovators are better equipped to meet these important attendee learning modalities than their Conventionalist counterparts.

2. Experiential factors

Next, compare the differences in perception of top experiential factors.
Attendees highly value hands-on interactions and immersive experiences (64%) compared to 46% of organizers. This mismatch suggests that many organizers are missing opportunities to deliver what attendees find most engaging.

3. Resource allocations versus attendee needs

Finally, let’s review where organizers allocate resources, compared to attendees’ event priorities.
Both organizers and attendees rank exhibits as the top priority. But attendees place networking second, while organizers rank it fifth—behind keynotes/general sessions, education sessions, and special events. This misalignment can mean missed opportunities for valuable attendee connections.

Event organizers, are you listening?

Sadly, three-quarters of you are not.

The barrier to becoming an Innovator

I don’t want to be too hard on the majority (56%) of event organizers who want to evolve their meeting designs but continue to hold static events. According to Freeman, nearly half of event organizers don’t feel empowered to make changes:

So, we must ask: Why do most event programs remain the same when market trends and attendees continue to change?”

“Nearly half of event organizers do not feel empowered to evolve their event.
We’ve uncovered a troubling new gap. Although most event organizers want to evolve their program, only some feel empowered to do so.
The data suggests that many event organizers aren’t just faced with attendee and exhibitor misalignments, but misalignments with leadership that limit or prevent event evolution.”

This is a polite way of saying that leadership is often afraid of creating connection at events because they see it as losing control. Even though such control is a myth.

Freeman found that a majority of Innovators felt “extremely empowered” to evolve their event programs and reported greater satisfaction with their event evolution. Interestingly, 49% of Innovators have a single person or a small team dedicated to networking-related activities.

Wait, there’s more!

I’ve only reported some of the conclusions in the report, which is full of useful little tidbits, like this one:

“Innovators plan to focus more on elevating the attendee experience (40%) than increasing the number of attendees (38%). Perhaps because Innovators understand that by enhancing the experience, they’ll attract high-quality attendees.”

So read the whole thing!

Two minor quibbles

1. Generational models: Freeman uses the popular Generation XYZ framework to explain changes in attendee needs. I’ve written about the limitations of the slotting of people into Boomer/Gen X/Millennial/Gen Z categories as it mistakes new behavior for shifts in human nature rather than a change in opportunity. Much of the “difference” between “generations” is caused by a change in that generation’s environment or circumstances. In my experience, attendees have always responded favorably to events with the priorities that Freeman suggests, event designs I’ve been championing for decades. It’s just that these days they are more in tune with what younger generations find normal.

2. The language of connection: The words we use for meetings matter. Reports like Freeman’s often use the term “networking,” but what attendees truly seek is meaningful connections. Let’s talk about creating and supporting connection, rather than just “networking”.

Conclusion

Freeman’s Trends Report Q4 2024 is a must-read. Ten years ago, Innovators were rare, but today they make up a quarter of event organizers. This is a promising trend, but there’s still a long way to go. I hope our industry embraces these insights and continues evolving in a positive direction.

Tags: Event design, event leadership, Freeman, leadership, trends| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

A calendar of peer conferences

Monday, April 29th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

Since 2009 I’ve maintained an informal calendar of peer conferences (aka unconferences) on this site. It’s informal because I only list events I hear about, a minuscule fraction of the unconferences people hold every day. Even so, the calendar lists hundreds of events.

Currently, I add a few peer conferences a month. For example, as I write this the May 2024 listing includes an online peer conference and in-person events in Vienna, Austria; Raleigh, North Carolina; and two in Nepal.

For fun, I extracted a sampling of geographic locations from the calendar and plotted them on a Google map. Click the image below to view the detailed map.

As you can see, peer conferences take place all over the world!

World map of major geographic locations of some of the tens of thousands of peer conferences — World map of some major geographic locations of peer conferences listed in the Conferences That Work peer conference calendar. Click on the map for details.

Who holds peer conferences?

Look at the calendar to see the fascinating variety of communities that hold peer conferences. Some groups, like software developers and testers, are big fans and it’s interesting to see how often finance, healthcare, and food industry professionals, as well as religious groups, universities, and small businesses hold unconferences.

It’s also amusing to see groups you might not even know about who hold peer conferences. Associations for casino security, veterinarians, voiceover coaches, independent gardening stores, makers, builders, attorneys, teachers and education, sports commissions, product managers, cybersecurity, transportation, and many other communities of interest are listed. And then there are plenty of unconferences focussed on social and cultural issues, like leadership, DEI, the environment, peace work, political movements, good government, animal welfare, veterans rights—the list goes on!

Why I do this work

The incredible diversity of communities, organizations, and businesses that use participant-driven and participation-rich event formats is astounding. This calendar provides strong evidence that any group with something in common who wants to connect and learn can benefit from peer conference designs. As a perpetually curious person, I love the hundreds of opportunities I’ve had over the last few decades to learn about many kinds of communities, topics, and issues and the people who grapple with them.

Seeing how peer conference designs benefit these folks when they come together warms my heart.

That’s why I keep doing this work.

P.S. Do you want to let me know about an upcoming peer conference? You can submit information about it here. [Please note: This is not a calendar for conventional meetings or events that are marketed as an “unconference” but consist of prescheduled sessions. Don’t waste your time, or mine, submitting such meetings; they will not be listed!]

Tags: associations, communities of practice, event calendar, Event design, events, peer conferences| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Six reasons why unconferences aren’t more popular

Monday, September 11th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Why aren’t unconferences more popular?

Events and media consultant Julius Solaris shared at the Unforgettable Experience Design Summit that he was initially very enthusiastic about unconference format events. He thought conferences would eventually adopt unconference models. But Julius didn’t see them catch on and now focuses on other aspects of the meeting industry.

I’ve been a facilitator, designer, and proponent of unconferences (aka peer conferences) since 1992. I still believe that these events, when well-designed and facilitated, offer the best attendee experience for the majority of conferences that are held today.

So, why aren’t unconferences more popular? Here are my six reasons.

1—Unconferences that aren’t

According to Wikipedia, unconferences are participant-driven meetings where the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting.

Unfortunately, far too many event promoters either haven’t a clue about what an unconference is, or, worse, deliberately call their events unconferences when they aren’t. They use “unconference” as a marketing buzzword to make their event sound cooler.

Let’s be clear. An event that:

Asks potential presenters to submit pre-event proposals for sessions isn’t an unconference.
Includes breakout sessions as well as presentations isn’t an unconference. [No, really, some folks say this!]
Claims unconference means that you get to choose which sessions you want to attend isn’t an unconference. [Don’t believe me? That’s how Google defines its annual Search Central unconference! <sigh>]

When attendees have a poor experience at what I call “ununconferences” that they’ve been told and believe are unconferences, naturally they will conclude that unconferences are nothing special.

2—Poor unconference design

Half a century ago, as a lowly graduate student, I attended tons of traditional academic conferences. And I hated them.

Many people have the same experience. So it’s understandable that when they have the desire or opportunity to create a conference themselves, they decide that they will open up the choice of program sessions to the attendees. They will hold an unconference!

The problem is that they often have no experience of what’s needed to create a good unconference. The tendency is to assume that because you’re rejecting the rigid format of traditional conferences, you can get away with less structure.

In reality, unconferences require a fair amount of structure. And it needs to be the right structure. For example, figuring out what attendees actually want and need to talk about doesn’t happen at the drop of a hat. Introducing attendees to each other and then facilitating connection around relevant content is an art, not a science. Closing sessions that meet personal and group wants and needs are often absent.

Because many so-called unconferences suffer from non-existent or poor design and/or facilitation they often turn out to be chaotic and unsatisfying. Such attendee experiences further reinforce the myth that unconferences are no big deal.

3—Overlooking the space needs of unconferences

Novices who try to hold unconferences invariably underestimate venue space needs. Compared to traditional conferences with the same number of participants, unconferences need larger general session rooms, because participants need to move about and meet in small groups, rather than sitting in fixed dense sets of tables and chairs. They also need more separate breakout spaces for participants to meet. Venue room capacity charts don’t include these designs. The result is that novice-organized unconferences rarely have the venue space they need to work well.

The solution to this is to design your unconference before choosing the venue. When this doesn’t happen (sadly, most of the time in my experience) the conference design, no matter how good it is, suffers.

4—Non-existent or insufficient pre-unconference attendee preparation

Unconferences are fundamentally different from broadcast-style meetings. Unconferences are led by participants, while traditional meetings are led by presenters. For an unconference to be successful, attendees need pre-event preparation. This is not a big deal, but it needs to be done. Conveners of well-designed unconferences explain, in general terms via pre-event communications what the unconference will be like and how to prepare for it.

One way to introduce conference newbies to a recurring unconference is to use a buddy system. Pairing returning participants with newbies and having the pairs get in touch with each other before the event is an excellent way to prepare folks who haven’t experienced an unconference before.

5—Assuming that “unconference” is synonymous with “Open Space”

Open Space is the most well-known unconference format. For many who plan an unconference, it’s the only format they’re aware of.

Don’t get me wrong. Open Space is an excellent format for short unconferences, and I’ve used it frequently myself. But it is not the only format available and is often not the best choice. I’ve written about this in my books; here’s a short critique of Open Space. In a sentence, Open Space provides little opportunity for participants to discover important peers, privileges extroverts, may not meet the actual wants and needs of participants, and uses a rather crude closing process.

A well-facilitated Open Space unconference is often an improvement over holding a traditional meeting with the same participants. But it is far from the only format that organizers can and should use.

6—The “unconference track” trap

Some event stakeholders make the well-intentioned but disastrous mistake of adding an unconference track to their traditional conference.

It’s the biggest unconference mistake you can make.

Most attendees don’t know what an unconference is or have had a bad experience at a poorly designed event. The result is that very few people will attend an unconference track. The event organizers notice the poor attendance, decide that providing an unconference “option” is not needed, and go back to a fully traditional conference format at subsequent events.

Well-designed unconferences are alive and well

People are holding well-designed unconferences all the time. Very few are large or high-profile. The variety of organizations and communities that run them might surprise you. (For example, while writing this I heard about the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association unconference, about which they made an excellent video.)

IBTTA July 2023, Nashville unconference (click to watch)

To get a taste of what’s going on, I maintain a peer conference calendar that lists unconferences that I hear of or are told about. Check out my calendars of past and upcoming unconferences. And if you’re holding one, submit the details and I’ll happily add it to my calendar!

To conclude

When designed and executed well, unconferences tend to endure. The one that began my meeting design journey, has now been running (apart from a COVID hiatus) for 33 years.

If I can help you design and facilitate an unconference for your organization, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Do you have other suggestions as to why unconferences aren’t more popular? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tags: Event design, logistics, open space, popular, unconferences, venues| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

One big advantage to starting a conference from scratch

Monday, August 28th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Keeping a recurring conference going, alive and fresh every time, is hard enough. Successfully starting a conference from scratch is even tougher.

But if you are courageous enough to start a conference, you have one big advantage.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: advantage, Event design, inaugural conference, meetings| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Connect the dots not collect the dots

Monday, August 21st, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Connect the dots, not collect the dots. How can we maximize the real value of a meeting? By maximizing how participants “connect the dots”—what they actually learn from their experiences at the meeting—rather than documenting what we or they think they should have learned.

Seth Godin makes the same point when talking about the future of education and what we can do about it in his 2012 TEDxYouth@BFS talk. Watch this 30-second clip.

Video clip transcript: “Are we asking our kids to collect dots or connect dots? Because we’re really good at measuring how many dots they collect, how many facts they have memorized, how many boxes they have filled in, but we teach nothing about how to connect those dots. You cannot teach connecting dots in a Dummies manual. You can only do it by putting kids into a situation where they can fail.”
—Seth Godin at TEDxYouth@BFS in the Youtube video STOP STEALING DREAMS

Stop collecting dots

Too many meetings continue to use short-term superficial evaluations as evidence for the efficacy of the event. We know that these kinds of meeting evaluations are unreliable (1, 2, 3). Luckily there are better ways to find out whether participants have learned to better connect the dots. Here are four of them:

Instead, design meetings to connect the dots

Here are five suggestions:

Build your event around conversation rather than content.
Maximize social connection by making it an integral component of every session.
Give people permission to connect.
Design sessions where the audience can’t stop talking about what they did.
Give attendees experiences, not things.

Finally, an example of what can happen when you design meetings with these ideas in mind: Linda’s very different experiences at TradConf and PartConf.

P.S.

Today, Seth Godin posted this:

“Hardy came home from school and proudly showed his mom the cheap plastic trinkets he had earned that day.
‘I stood quietly on the dot and so I got some tickets. And if I stand on the dot quietly tomorrow, I can get some more prizes!'”
…
“Is standing on a dot the thing we need to train kids to do? Has each of us spent too much time standing on dots already?”
—On the dot, Seth Godin

Tags: evaluations, Event design, Seth Godin| Posted in Event design, Facilitating Change | No Comments »

Anca Trifan interviews me about participation-rich meetings and event design

Monday, February 20th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Yes! Just posted: Anca Trifan interviews me on her show Events:demystified. We talk about all kinds of things, with a focus on my work and thinking about participant-driven and participation-rich meetings and event design.

I think this is one of the best interviews I’ve done. Anca gets full credit for asking great questions and also taking the time to edit the interview. Thank you, Anca!

Here’s her video and podcast for your viewing and listening pleasure. I’ve added a timeline below to help you jump to the bits that really interest you. (Though, actually, it’s all terrific!)

Enjoy!

Timeline

MM:SS Content
02:00 Anca introduces me.
03:30 How Anca and I met.
04:30 What I’ve been doing since the COVID pandemic started.
06:00 On traveling to events, and my passion for what I do.
07:45 Behind the scenes: How I got into designing and facilitating participant-driven and participation-rich meetings.
11:00 What participant-driven and participation-rich meeting design means, and the core components.
13:45 Creating a conference program on the fly at the event. It sounds scary, but it works!
15:00 Why we need to have participant-driven and participation-rich meetings. Lectures are a terrible way to learn anything.
16:30 Online meetings benefit from these designs too.
17:00 Participant-driven and participation-rich meetings help people connect better.
17:30 Online has displaced the value of lectures at in-person meetings.
18:45 Participant-driven and participation-rich designs bring connection around meaningful content into the sessions.
19:00 How Ask me anything (AMA) sessions allow participants to choose what they want to discuss with an expert.
20:00 Are AMA sessions easy to run?
21:00 What motivates me to do this work.
22:45 My early experiences of traditional conferences.
24:30 Sponsor break.
25:30 On Tahira Endean‘s (excellent) book Intentional Event Design and my books’ focus.
28:00 Some of the changes I’ve seen in events in the last dozen years.
30:30 “You never really had control of your event anyway.”
31:00 “Are we moving from content-first events to connection-first events?”
34:00 The value of presenters (and stand-up comedians) who interact with their audience.
35:15 “I’m interested in creating meetings that change people’s lives.”
36:15 A piece of advice for event professionals.
38:15 A piece of advice for association professionals who are responsible for events.
40:00 Following me on social media (and how to say my name correctly 😀).

Tags: AMA, Anca Trifan, Event design, interview, meeting design, participant-driven and participation-rich, Tahira Endean| Posted in Interviews | 2 Comments »

You can’t make people change. But…

Monday, September 2nd, 2019 by Adrian Segar

“You can’t make people change. But you can create an environment where they choose to.”
—Seth Godin, Leadership

Change is hard. And you can’t make people change.

However, meetings have tremendous potential to change lives. Attendees have something in common: a profession, a passion, a shared experience together. They are with people who, in some way, do what they do, speak the same language, and face the same challenges.

What an opportunity to connect with like-minded souls, learn from each other, and, consequently, change one’s life for the better!

Unfortunately, most conferences squander this opportunity. Learning is restricted to broadcast-style lectures, Q&A is often more about status than learning, and attendees have little if any input into the topics and issues discussed.

Peer conferences support change

The peer conferences I’ve been designing and facilitating for 33 years are different. Yes, you can’t make people change. But, as Seth Godin points out, you can create an environment where they choose to!

Peer conferences create an optimal environment for supporting attendees in the difficult work of making changes in their lives.

Peer conferences do this by providing a safe, supportive, and participation-rich environment that includes the freedom to choose what happens.

A safe environment supports attendees taking risks: the risks of thinking about challenges and issues in new ways.
The supportive environment of a peer conference provides process tools that allow attendees to freely explore new possibilities.
A participation-rich environment ensures that attendees are likely to connect with peers who can help them or whom they can help, thus building networks and new capabilities in the future.
The freedom to choose what happens at a peer conference allows attendees to collectively create the meeting that they want and need, rather than be tied to the limited vision of a program committee or the vested interests of conference stakeholders.

These are the core design elements of peer conferences that make them so successful in creating change. Their very design maximizes the likelihood that participants will choose to make useful and productive changes in their lives.

Tags: Event design, experience design, facilitating change, freedom to choose, interactive, leadership, participation-rich, peer conferences, safety, Seth Godin| Posted in Event design, Facilitating Change, leadership | No Comments »

Event design changes society

Monday, July 1st, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Event design may be more important than you think. I’m going to argue that event design changes society. And I’ve got legendary communications theorist Marshall McLuhan and computer scientist Alan Kay on my side!

User Experience and Interface Design

My inspiration is an interesting Hewlett Packard Enterprise article: 15 books that influenced top UX and UI influencers by Joe Stanganelli. (UX and UI are abbreviations for computer hardware/software User eXperience and User Interface design.) Here’s an excerpt:

“Many UX and UI specialists take a great deal of inspiration and learning from books that have little, if anything, to do with UX.

This is particularly true for storied computer scientist Alan Kay, one of the inventors of the modern graphical user interface. A self-described “voracious reader” since age 3, Kay provided me with a list of more than two dozen authors—let alone books—that had a profound and “shocking” effect on his thinking and work. The works of one particular author, however, gets special attention from Kay: media theorist H. Marshall McLuhan. Kay points to three McLuhan works from the 1960s:

“The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man” (1962), in which McLuhan predicted the advent of the World Wide Web more than 30 years before it came to be

“Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” (1964)

“The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects” (1967)

Together, says Kay, these books identify a fundamental concept of UX and human factors: that humans evolutionarily adapt their ways of thinking to fit communication technologies. Thus, design changes society [emphasis added].”

Event design changes society

Our society is defined by our communication technologies. As these technologies evolve, society adapts to them and is changed by them. For example, the development and design of touch interfaces have revolutionized what we can do on modern phones. Providing inexpensive ubiquitous communication and knowledge retrieval to most of the human race has significantly changed society.

Event design has a similar impact. Readers of this blog will know that I’m not equating event design with glitz or logistics. Rather event design is about what happens during an event, which is supported by the designed processes that make participant-driven and participation-rich meetings fundamentally different from the old information broadcast model.

Meetings have become a crucial supplier of professional — and hence — societal development. Traditional events espouse the outdated philosophy that only a few people should talk while the rest listen. As these designs fade away, participatory meeting models take their place. New, superior designs foster attendee connection and participation around wanted and needed learning.

Such fundamental transformation of event process inevitably creates societal transformation. Event design changes society!

And that’s a good thing.

Tags: Alan Kay, communication, Event design, Marshall McLuhan, society| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Many “experiential” events are just razzle-dazzle

Monday, December 17th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Beware of “experiential” events that are just razzle-dazzle.

“Experiential” has become a buzzword to use to describe hip events. Instead of listening to speakers, you’re going to have — wait for it — experiences! Sounds so much better, doesn’t it?

The problem is that most events touted as experiential simply add irrelevant novelty to a familiar event process.

For example, the much-hyped C2 Montréal.

C2 attendees have:

Sat back to back wearing virtual reality goggles, conversing with one another’s avatar (2015);
Shared an umbrella under fake snow with a stranger (2016); and
Been given the opportunity to talk to four other people while sitting in chairs suspended from the ceiling (2017).

These “experiences” are simply gussied-up conversations held in novel visual and sensory environments. What is the value, other than novelty, created by adding virtual reality to a conversation between two people in the same room? By conversing in a fake outdoors setting rather than taking a walk outside? By talking to people from a chair hanging from the ceiling?

Conversation is a human practice so old we have no idea when it began. C2, and many other “hot” events, add expensive technological glitz to a conversation, slapping a skin of irrelevant novelty onto a core human activity. Rebrand the result as “experiential”, and voilà — you have a hip FOMO event.

All this is a slightly more sophisticated version of what, unfortunately, passes for creative event design these days. Adding an entertaining overlay to what happens routinely at an event and calling it “experiential” is ultimately no different from defining “creative” event design as novel decor, venues, production, or food and beverage.

What to do instead
Every event provides experiences, so all events are experiential! So let’s decouple the term “experiential” from what are actually “glitzy” events. The right question stakeholders need to ask is how well the experiences events provide fulfill attendees’ actual wants and needs.

For example, every event provides opportunities for conversations. So how can we design an event to create the best possible conversations?

You don’t get better face-to-face conversations in virtual reality or by suspending participants from the ceiling.

Instead, focus on finding and offering the best questions and topics for conversation. This includes providing group and session processes that support participants in uncovering and choosing conversations that will be most useful and meaningful to them.

Also, concentrate on providing supportive environments for ad-hoc conversation. So quieten or eliminate background music during meals and socials, supply a variety of quiet places close to session locales for participants to meet, avoid large rounds and assigned seating at meals, incorporate plenty of white space, etc.

Ironically, such meeting design tweaks cost little or nothing, unlike the flashy C2 examples. So you can provide a significantly better experience for attendees for less cost by applying simple effective meeting design principles. (Unsubtle hint: Working with someone who knows how to design and facilitate relevant attendee experience could be the most cost-effective improvement you could make.)

There’s nothing wrong with novelty. But instead of putting tons of time, effort, and money into dressing-up meetings with novel razzle-dazzle, concentrate your efforts on functional meeting design that provides genuinely useful and meaningful experiences to participants.

Tags: C2, conversation, Event design, experiential, experiential events, FOMO, Montreal, Novelty, virtual reality| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

We are biased against truly creative event design

Monday, December 10th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

We are biased against creativity. Though most people say they admire creativity, research indicates we actually prefer inside-the-box thinking.

“In an article for Slate, Jessica Olien debunks the myth that originality and inventiveness are valued in US society: “This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it.” She cites academic studies indicating that people are biased against creative minds. They crave the success of the result, but shun the process that produces it.”
—Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America

The meeting industry is no exception. We define creativity as a subset of what is actually possible. A “creative” event design is one with a novel venue and/or decor and lighting and/or food and beverage. Consequently, planners restrict the entire focus of creative event design to novel visual and sensory elements. The meeting industry has redefined novelty as creativity.

Truly creative event design
We are biased against truly creative event design. Watering down creativity biases stakeholders against the value and promise of truly creative event design, which:

Starts with the key questions “Who’s it for?” and “What’s it for?”
Moves to “what should happen?“; and finally
Takes a hard look at the process changes needed to develop a more effective event.

Truly creative event design questions, for example, whether we need to have a keynote speaker, relegate significant participant discussions to breaks and socials, or supply entertainment during meals.

I’ve experienced plenty of bias against comprehensive event design since I began developing participant-driven and participation-rich meetings in 1992. Despite over 25 years of evidence that such designs improve meetings for all stakeholders, most traditional event owners shy away from exploring change that is creatively significant. Even potential clients who are experiencing some combination of falling attendance, evaluations, or profits have a hard time facing changing what happens at their events.

Can we overcome bias against truly creative event design?
Though millions of meetings take place every year, thousands of meeting organizers know how to create truly creative conference designs. The steady rise in popularity of participant-driven and participation-rich designs like Conferences That Work continues.

We can do better than novelty at our meetings. The first step is to acknowledge our bias against creativity, and how we distract stakeholders with novelty instead. The second is to incorporate truly creative design into our events and experience the resulting benefits.

Image attribution Rob Donnelly

Tags: bias, creative design, creativity, Event design, inside the box, Jessica Olien, Novelty, outside the box, Sarah Kendzior| Posted in Event design, Facilitating Change | No Comments »